Haven't been able to get an answer from the actual people...

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Oxygen, Feb 28, 2007.

  1. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

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    I've actually asked this of some illegal Mexicans I personally know, but they dance around the answer, so I thought I'd throw this to the wolves (i.e., you guys):

    Why didn't you come here legally?

    Why do they insist on breaking what is essentially the first US law they come to?

    One quasi-answer I got was that the process took too long. I don't know how long it takes, or if it costs anything, (and the person I asked couldn't tell me, which says she didn't even try). I have a hard time accepting this as a legitimate answer. Can anybody enlighten me?
     
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  3. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    Coming in illegally is easy as pie and quick. Coming in legally takes a long time, lots of paperwork, etc. Why the hell would they bother to go thru legal channels when we don't defend the boarder at all and offer free healthcare, free education, welfare, ect. if they just make it over the border!
     
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  5. orcot Valued Senior Member

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    legal people have legal jobs and legal pay witch lead to the evils of taxes forced holidays and dreadful dreadful minimum wage fit enough for bill gates. Besides if yo don't have any money or education that it's pretty hard to get a green card.
    madanthonywayne are you a European or something?
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    These people are dirt-poor, living without hope. Their own job market is in turmoil due to free trade so that even people who have jobs are in constant danger of losing them. The Mexican economy is strong and it has the highest per-capita GDP in Latin America, but it is for all practical purposes an aristocracy. Its modest-sized middle class is vastly outnumbered by the working poor, and the poverty rate (which is not the $17,000 family income that defines "poverty" in our country) is 18% nationally and 25% in rural areas. Those are non-working poor, in a country with no welfare system, no Food Stamps, no Union Rescue Missions. No generous middle-class people handing them money to assuage their consciences as they climb into their BMWs. No free school lunches for their children, no dumpsters full of perfectly good expired food.

    These people are desperate. They are living on the bottom step of Maslow's Hierarchy, struggling to survive from day to day. Imagine yourself in that situation and think how much importance you would put on the immigration laws of a country that looks like Disneyland from your vantage point. Think how you would feel if somebody told you you had to fill out a form, when your own government never even built a school in your village so you can't write, then said you have to wait a long time for processing while your children are getting by on a 200-calorie protein-deficient diet, and the quota from your country is so low that you have a very good chance of not ever getting in. And you hear of the Chinese and Indian immigrants who hide their 24k jewelry while they go to public hospitals in America and get free treatment. You hear of people coming to America from as far away as Somalia, Georgia, Lebanon, and Vietnam, people who aren't anywhere near as poor as you are, and being welcomed, being given trusted jobs as security guards and taxi drivers, and sending huge money orders back to their families. While you, a friend and neighbor in dire need, are turned away.

    Would you understand? Would you peacefully walk 1,000 miles back to your hovel and patiently wait for "the system" to call your number? Well guess what? The majority of Mexicans do that! Most of them are not coming here. The ones who do come here are the most desperate, the most determined, or perhaps just the luckiest. It's a wonder that the entire population of Mexico--well the half of them who are poor anyway--are not beating down the border stations, overwhelming the guards with sheer numbers, and pouring into San Diego and El Paso.

    The disparity in standard of living between the USA and Mexico is greater than between any other two adjacent countries on earth. Nowhere else on this planet can you stand at a national boundary and see such an incredible difference. Telling them they can't come here is like making a starving dog sit at your feet while you eat a steak. They simply can't comprehend why this is happening.

    They've spent almost a hundred years under the iron thumb of the PRI, being told that they live in a democracy. The USA tried to "liberate" Vietnam from the communists and is now trying to "liberate" Iraq from the Islamic fundamentalists, but we ignore our own neighbors who need to be "liberated" from an equally despotic government. Because that government is almost unfailingly supportive of U.S. policy, and if we stay on good terms some day we'll be able to cheat them out of their petroleum without having to go to war. Their own government doesn't care about them, and neither do we.

    You rednecks who bitch about the Mexicans have absolutely no humanity.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2007
  8. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    another possibility is that they carry some kind of disease.
     
  9. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    I fully understand why Mexicans would want to come to the US. No doubt, if I were in their shoes, I'd do the same. My grandfather did when he came from Cuba.

    But the US can not accept an infinite number of Spanish speaking immigrants indefinately without balkenizing our country.

    Radical Hispanic groups are already talking about the Reconquista, or Azatland (something like that) where Mexico basically retakes the Southwest due to massive immigration.

    Seeing a bunch of illegal aliens waving Mexican flags and demanding rights really pissed me off.

    I don't hold the fact that they came here illegally against them. It's our fault for not controlling our own border. And as you said, the US-Mexican border has the largest income disparity in the world. But if you come here, please do it to become an American.
     
  10. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Then why aren't we trying to do something about the plight of the Mexican people, instead of sending troops halfway around the world? Wouldn't it make more sense to "help" the people in our own neighborhood?
    These "radical Hispanic groups" are seeded by second-generation university students who woke up one morning lamenting the loss of "their culture," then sat down with a cup of Starbucks and wrote their blogs on their Macintoshes.

    And it's spelled Aztlán, the name for the region from which "Aztec" is derived. Speaking of spelling, it's "indefinitely" and "Balkans." I see you picked up the American attitude toward paying attention in school. And you wonder why so many of us think the only hope for America is a huge influx of immigrants? Do you think your grandfather floated to Florida on a milk carton or whatever so you could dishonor his family by displaying your ignorance?
    Did you actually "see" them or did you just watch one of the inflammatory news channels whose owners have discovered that angry, frightened people watch more news and boost their ratings? For every hundred Mexicans you can find staging a demonstration--usually spearheaded by some thoroughly Americanized punk kids who fancy themselves the next Che Guevara but can't pronounce "Guevara" correctly--there are ten thousand Mexicans quietly mowing lawns and building houses for people who can't afford the inflated wages that illiterate, undereducated Americans who can't spell "definite" think they deserve for doing the same work more slowly and sloppily.
    They do that! Mexicans have the highest rate of assimilation of any ethnic group. You can't find a third-generation Mexican-American; their outmarriage rate in the first generation is fifty percent and most of their children aren't even taught Spanish. Los Angeles's top Spanish-music station had to hire all English-speaking DJ's last year, because it's no longer cool for young Latinos to speak Spanish!

    There is no other contemporary immigrant group that even approaches that level of Americanization. The Somalis in Minneapolis are trying to foist their Stone Age tribal-centered Islamic culture on Americans by not letting airline passengers carrying liquor ride in their taxis. The city of Detroit actually gave mosques an exemption from the noise limits so they can blast those damn prayer calls over half the city five times a day; now the Americans have to live like immigrants in their own city.

    In 45 years of living in Arizona and southern California, I never once had a Mexican or Mexican-American try to impose his culture on me. (That "viva la raza" thing is just stupid macho fun and games like St. Patrick's Day and the only imposition I suffered was to be handed a cold Carta Blanca by a smiling chica.) They all loved me because I helped them learn to speak English better.
     
  11. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Oh, sure! And why not help all of the other disadvantaged people in the world while we're at it? Africa, India, China, Phillipines, Honduras, Colombia, Peru, Uraguay, Poland, Hungary, ...., and the thousands of other shitty little nations in the world that can't or won't help themselves?

    People are always asking, "Why should America be the world policeman?" Well, I ask, "Why should America be the provider for all of the poor people in the world?"

    And wouldn't that be stickin' our noses into the affairs of other nations? Is that what you want now ....when just recently you posted a long, long, bullshit post about how the US was guilty of stickin' it's nose into the affairs of other nations. What's up, Fraggle?

    Baron Max
     
  12. 15ofthe19 35 year old virgin Registered Senior Member

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    You rednecks who bitch about the Mexicans have absolutely no humanity.

    Nice job Fraggle. Love it when a stereotype is used to denegrate people who are supposedly the worst offenders, when it comes to using stereotypes.

    Anywho, you and James R are both apparently slipping. I don't remember either of you using such base arguments to make your points two years ago, when I had time to follow thing around here. You might want to re-evaluate.

    For what it's worth, I employ more Mexicans in this town than anybody, but it's still a damned pain in the ass when they aren't completely legit. We risk some serious liability by employing them, because typically they can't make total compliance with our insurance requirements, which opens us up to potentially catastrophic liability. Why do we take the risk? Because, as you made mention, they are hard workers. They do appreciate the opportunity, often more than the so-called native americans that once had the work, and squandered the opportunity to keep it. But with all that being said, they still need to come to this country through the proper route, so that once they are here, they don't have the risk of being detained/deported for not having their papers in order. It's a huge pain in the ass to have go down to the jail, and bail out your best punch-out man, because he's been cruising around on a fake SS card.

    I know a lot of you don't get this, because you don't really deal with this shit first hand. You only read about it, and think you know about it. It's not as clear-cut as so many articles/news-stories make it out to be. Just like with any other group, you've got sorry-ass-lazy Mexicans that have come here, and hard working, honest, "glad as hell to be here" Mexicans that make positive contributions to the economy. But whatever the case, they should come here through the proper channels. Fraggle Rocker, your bleeding heart arguments that rationalize sneaking across a legal border scare the hell out of me. It's almost as if you wouldn't blame someone for breaking into your own house, as long as they came from a desperate circumstance. Somehow, I don't really believe you would be A-OK with that, if it happened to you.
     
  13. Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Fraggle Rocker:

    I live in New York and know first hand that our Hispanic immigrants are not moving towards assimilation. Every day I see more Spanish signs and hear more Spanish conversations.

    It's revolting.
     
  14. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Max, your inability to follow rhetoric more than one level deep is positively amusing. And I don't think it's real. You're brighter than that, but you've backed yourself into this cranky old man persona and you just have to keep it up.

    I don't think we should be sticking our noses into anyone's business. But I'm attempting to "get with the program" here. Do I really have to say "assuming for the sake of the argument" every time I do this to make sure I don't lose any of you? Then you'll just bitch about the length of my posts.

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    The majority of Americans seem to think that the United States has some cosmic right to go stomping through other people's countries with its ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots. I'm just asking: If that's the way you feel, then why the hell does it have to be Iraq? A place that we don't have the foggiest chance of ever understanding, a place whose fate is hardly entwined with ours at all? Why not Mexico? The country right next door, one we've fought against, stolen land from, imported workers from when it suited us, a place that a great many of us have seen with our own eyes, and one whose current dismal condition has a profound impact on us, to wit, a nearly intractable immigration problem?

    If so many Americans think it's okay for us to be the Old World's policeman, why couldn't we instead be the New World's social worker?
    Well, sorry. Even tolerant professorial old F.R. occasionally loses it. I've lost it with the Abrahamic religions, as most of you know. I think the Abrahamists should all be shipped off to a moon of Saturn where they can have their little wars and kill each other off, and let the rest of us get on with the work of perfecting civilization. And after living fifty miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line for five years, I've lost it with rednecks. (I suppose that's a double whammy since they're all Abrahamists too.) The racist language I hear them use in "polite company," their complete lack of compassion for anyone not like them, their proud ignorance of science and history... well I could go on for days. But screw 'em. And screw Lincoln for starting the Civil War because when he won we had to take the rednecks back!
    Why do you, an intelligent, thoughtful member of SciForums, regard this as a problem with immigration, rather than a problem with a too-big-for-its-britches government that sticks its nose too far into your business?
    And just what are the chances of any of these people getting legitimate documents during their lifetimes? We all know it isn't you basically law-abiding, taxpaying employers who are behind this cabal to keep willing workers from taking available jobs at a fair price. It's the unions who think a child on whose education we've spent roughly $100K should be able to walk out of high school and get a job pushing a button on a machine (with both hands so he doesn't absent-mindedly cut one of them off) and earn $45K for the "work." And it's also the rip-off contractors who take three times as long and twice the staff as necessary to do a simple job, make us wait four months for them to get around to it, and charge ten times what it's worth. Our licensing laws are the result of collusion between the government and the aristocracy of fat-cat tradesmen.
    That would be nice, but they can't. The labor unions and the old-boy network of tradesmen perform the same function as the guilds in medieval times, of keeping immigrants from undercutting their prices. And the government collaborates, claiming that it's for our benefit.
    If someone broke into my house it would have a negative effect on me personally. The personal effect on me of Mexican immigrants is just the opposite. We spent seven years in Humboldt County, not able to get anyone to do yard work and handyman jobs. The grownups are always off fishing and the kids don't want to get their hands dirty. Even though we pay $10 an hour, which in our rural area is more than many breadwinners make. Three years ago the Mexicans finally started coming that far north, and it was a breath of fresh air. We're getting our lawn mowed, our pond landscaped, our house repaired, our trash hauled, and a bunch of other deferred maintenance that at age 63 we just couldn't keep up with ourselves. They think we're lovable old crazies for paying $10 an hour for this work, and they'll come out at midnight on Saturday if we have a problem because they think this is the sweetest deal on earth.
    You gotta be joking. The entire city of Glendale (one of L.A.'s larger suburbs) has signage entirely in Armenian. In Monterey Park it's all in Chinese. In Westminster it's in Vietnamese. On Olympic Boulevard it's in Korean. Riding the subway to work in Washington DC some mornings I don't hear a word of English, and I'm not talking about Spanish or Chinese because like many Californians I can understand all three of my state's major languages. (I went to college.) Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Hindi and other Indic languages, and African tongues I can't identify.

    When my mother was a kid in Chicago 90 years ago there was a huge swath of the city where people only spoke Bohemian. (You call it Czech now.) And another where it was Polish, and another where it was Croatian. Every major city had an Italian ghetto.

    You're trying to pass this off as some new phenomenon that's limited to Spanish speakers? The Czechs, Poles, Croatians and Italians all assimilated. Nobody even calls themselves an Italian-American any more. And as I've noted, no one assimilates faster than the Mexicans and the other Latin American are right behind them. A good many of them don't marry Latinos and most of them don't teach their children Spanish because they see it as a handicap.

    The world is shrinking, our communities are overlapping, and we're all learning to adapt to it. I suggest you get with the program or get out of the way. I won't knock you over but the kids who are growing up in this milieu will. Multilingualism and multiculturalism in general is a force for enrichment. And if there's any culture that could stand a double dose of enrichment, it's ours.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2007
  15. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    It's funny how you phrase this question as though they had some kind of realistic shot at coming legally. You'll get more insight if you ask them "why did you come here?"
     
  16. madanthonywayne Morning in America Registered Senior Member

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    Spelling. You're criticizing spelling now? I knew I had spelled Aztlán incorrectly, but I was in a hurry and didn't bother to look it up. "Indefinitely" and "Balkans", you got me there.

    The spelling and grammar on internet forums is generally atrocious. Yet, I've never noticed you pulling out your red pen before. Why now?

    And I also never realized that spelling was a point of honor. Thank goodness I'm not using my real name here, or my family would be shamed for generations.

    I can see it now:
    Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You misspelled "Indefinitely" and "Balkans", prepare to die.
     
  17. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    It's called a "blue pencil." That's what editors used to use.

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    My point is that Americans as a people don't give a damn about their ability to use their own language and it's hardly limited to the internet. We went from a Rhodes Scholar to a President who can't even speak English fluently. I worked with a lady whose job was classroom training and who was making about $80 or 90K, and a typical phrase out of her mouth was "I have went."

    I admit that except for the spelling errors you write well. Sorry to snap at you. We welcomed a lot of Cubans just because we were pissed off at Castro, but we don't want to treat Mexicans the same way because there are more of them and because they don't happen to have the advantage of the one thing communist countries do well: education. These days we're getting a lot of immigrants from the former Soviet Bloc. They have a lot of trouble with English pronunciation because it's as bizarre to them as Moldovan pronunciation is to us, but they all seem to write English perfectly.

    If America gets any dumber, the foreigners will take over by attrition.
     
  18. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

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    ...who bickered over the definition of the word 'is'...
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The truth is most people illegally in the US came here by legal means, on a worker visa, or a tourist visa, and just never left.
     
  20. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Ah, no. That was true several years ago, but it ain't true no more!

    Baron Max
     
  21. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimates that roughly 3.2 million of the estimated eight million illegal immigrant population, or 40 percent, originally entered the country on non-immigrant visas.
    http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/back103.html

    OK, I guess that's not most, but it's still a significant percentage of all illegal aliens. This includes non-Mexican immigrants, too, so perhaps the percentage of Mexicans that enter the country through legal means is higher.
     
  22. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not sure what you're saying or trying to say, Spider??

    HOW they got into this nation is totally irrelevant ...the fact that they're visas ran out and they stayed ILLEGALLY is still .....dare I say it.... ILLEGAL.

    Or doesn't "illegal" mean "illegal" anymore??? If not, when did it change?

    Baron Max
     
  23. Oxygen One Hissy Kitty Registered Senior Member

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    So what stops them from going legal? I have a Cambodian friend who's going through the process, but he's stalled for now. Something about a fee, I think he said. He came over as part of some church-sponsored thing, a mission I believe (and from what he's told about his village, I can see a charitable organization trying to help people there). But for some reason he and his wife have stalled out on the process.
     

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